Type 2 diabetes: new genes, new understanding.
Over the past two years, there has been a spectacular change in the capacity to identify common genetic variants that contribute to predisposition to complex multifactorial phenotypes such as type 2 diabetes (T2D). The principal advance has been the ability to undertake surveys of genome-wide association in large study samples. Through these and related efforts, approximately 20 common variants are now robustly implicated in T2D susceptibility. Current developments, for example in high-throughput resequencing, should help to provide a more comprehensive view of T2D susceptibility in the near future. Although additional investigation is needed to define the causal variants within these novel T2D-susceptibility regions, to understand disease mechanisms and to effect clinical translation, these findings are already highlighting the predominant contribution of defects in pancreatic beta-cell function to the development of T2D.
Prokopenko
Inga
I
Oxford Centre for Diabetes, Endocrinology and Metabolism, University of Oxford, Churchill Hospital, Old Road, Headington, Oxford, OX3 7LJ, UK.
McCarthy
Mark I
MI
Lindgren
Cecilia M
CM
D002874:Chromosome Mapping; D003924:Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2 / Q000235:genetics* / Q000473:pathology; D020022:Genetic Predisposition to Disease; D055106:Genome-Wide Association Study; D006801:Humans; D015201:Meta-Analysis as Topic; D019655:Quantitative Trait, Heritable